Kevin Hunt: West Hartford Doctor Challenges GE On `Sabbath Mode' Oven

A two-year-old gas oven sits, like new, in the kitchen of a residence retired pediatrician and neonatologist Robert Harris of West Hartford uses only on Friday nights and Saturdays for the Jewish Sabbath.

It's not the oven he thought he was getting, nor is it one he wants.

Harris, who paid close to $600 for the oven, felt betrayed by General Electric for telling him the oven's Sabbath mode complied with the needs of Jews observing the weekly Sabbath. Harris, like other observant Jews, does not start or stop any electrical device, whether a computer, phone or oven, on the Sabbath

"This stems from the biblical commandment of not lighting a fire," says Harris, "and in modern times, electricity is equated with fire."

Harris also cannot cook food on the Sabbath. He is allowed only to reheat previously cooked food without starting or stopping an electrical circuit. An oven with a Sabbath mode bypasses the automatic 12-hour shut-off circuitry built into modern ovens for safety. He also assumed the Sabbath-compliant oven he bought had a time-bake feature that could be set before the weekend Sabbath to turn on automatically to reheat the pre-cooked food.

"That assumption," he says, "ultimately proved wrong."

As Harris understood it, this was not a proper Sabbath mode. For the past year-and-a-half, Harris has tried to make his point to General Electric but says he could not find anyone knowledgeable about the Sabbath mode.

Why did the oven's manual include instructions for the Sabbath mode? And how was the oven approved by Star-K, a kosher certification agency?

Finally, GE sent a technician to Harris' home.

"The technician had less knowledge than I did about the Sabbath mode," Harris wrote in a letter to GE in March, "thanked me for educating him and then asked me to pay him."

The store wouldn't take the stove back. GE wouldn't either, though it offered Harris a $300 discount off the retail price of a new one.

When The Bottom Line first contacted General Electric, whose headquarters are in Fairfield, the company insisted the oven had the Sabbath mode, that all of its Sabbath-mode ranges work the same and even provided a copy of Sabbath mode instructions from the oven's manual.

"We believe we comply with what the Sabbath mode should accomplish," says GE spokeswoman Kim Freeman. "It may not meet his particular needs, but as long as we comply with what Star-K recommends we have done our job."

But GE did more than that. It consulted with its own engineer and, finally, with Star-K. That's when Harris discovered the variations of Sabbath mode.

A basic Sabbath-mode oven, certified by Star-K, bypasses the automatic 12-hour shut-off system to allow Jewish owners to use the stove continuously on holidays for two or three days. Harris' oven did not have a time-bake feature that would turn on automatically and reheat his food on the weekend Sabbath.

"We do not guarantee that an appliance will have a time-bake feature," says Rivka Lea Goldman, the appliance liaison for Star-K. "I was trying to explain that to the doctor. He felt he was misled. I tried to explain that the words 'Sabbath mode' are perhaps misleading. Our organization did not pick that terminology. Sabbath mode is really for Jewish holidays. But the manufacturers are obviously printing manuals for thousands of consumers, not just Jewish."

Because Harris assumed he was getting an all-purpose Sabbath mode oven, he did not notice the qualifications on the Star-K website. (For a list of appliances certified by Star-K, visit cour.at/JEq665.)

"Who is the culprit here?" says Harris. "I think there is plenty of blame to go around. Star-K erroneously allowed GE to claim this range as having the full Sabbath mode, which is a misnomer. Star-K does admit this but told me I should have check with them or their website. I do have some limited culpability in not doing so. At the end of the day, I understand what went wrong."

With this oven, Harris can either allow it to remain unused or override the automatic shutoff and keep it running — a potential safety risk — for the 24-hour Sabbath.

"This is not something I'm happy about," he says, "and will probably just not use the oven to heat up food."